Of all the stories written about the British sailors and marines taken hostage by the IRG, little mention is made of two questions that anyone with military experience immediately want to ask:

(1) Where were the HMS Cornwall and USS Underwood (the frigates in the task force)?

(2) Why didn’t the sailors and marines defend themselves?

These eventualities are usually prepared for in the type of operations being conducted.

The stock market was off slightly today, and the news reports blamed the drop on an “unexpected” drop in the sale of new homes for February.

If ever there was an example of driving by looking in the rear view mirror, it’s this one.

First off, we’ve been reading for weeks about how builders have scaled back, how orders have been canceled, and how lenders have been tightening up to reduce exposure to subprime mortgage defaults. We also heard last week that the sales of existing homes has increased. Any bets that a good number of those existing homes were those that had gone into foreclosure?

The drop was less than 4%. I’m surprised it wasn’t more.

Sen. Diane Feinstein said yesterday, “Attorney General Gonzales has the view that he serves two masters, that he serves the president and that he serves as the chief law enforcement officer. He serves one master, and that’s the people of this country.”

Wow. This statement was obviously made for public consumption, but did she really expect the TV audience to nod their heads at this statement without realizing its complete stupidity and lack of agreement with the founding principles of our government?

Somebody is in charge of the cabinet members. Who? Well, it isn’t Congress (thank goodness). The people? No, otherwise these officers would be elected directly and not appointed. (Our senators have been elected directly since the 17th Amendment, and look at what we ended up with, people like Diane Feinstein.)

We elect a president expecting him to carry out the policies he campaigned on with his cabinet selections. Those who don’t follow his leadership should be replaced. It’s that simple. So Sen. Feinstein is absolutely correct in interpreting Mr. Gonzales’ loyalties, and absolutely incorrect in interpreting what they ought to be.

To suggest that the Attorney General not follow the president’s leadership or his obligations under the law as required by his oath office is to suggest that his master is not the “people of this country.”

Scenario:

A number of high-profile news reports uncovers widespread violation of federal civil rights statutes and campaign finance laws. Responding to political pressures and personal principles, the president promises in a state of the union address to prioritize enforcement of the laws and aggressively seek prosecution of violators. He instructs his attorney general to urge U.S. attorneys to comply with the new prosecution priorities. Most of the U.S. attorneys comply with the president’s instructions; however, a few, including some assigned to districts where the high profile cases are reported to have occurred, do not rearrange their priorites.

What should the president or attorney general do?

Hint: U.S. attorneys are political appointees. They are not independent prosecutors. The public expects the president to carry out the policies he was elected to implement through his role as chief executive over the cabinet departments.

Answer: the U.S. attorneys who are not on board should be replaced.

The actual scenario: the high profile cases are evidence of electoral fraud and flagrant violation of immigration laws.  Some U.S. attorneys did not act aggressively on evidence of violation, preferring to pursue their own personal priorities.

What should the president have done?

An AP report on Chile’s woman president, Michelle Bachelet, points out her efforts to improve the participation of women in Chile’s workforce. It cites several statistics, two of which are curious when taken together.

The first assertion is that women are paid less than men in Chile. They don’t say whether comparisons were being made in the same jobs, but let’s assume apples are compared to apples:

There’s more to be done in this conservative country where women often earn up to 30 percent less than men, administration officials say.

Later on, the same article reports an underrepresentation in the work force. Again, let’s charitably assume that differences in unemployment rates between men and women support this disparity:

[Womens'] average work participation in Chile is just 37.5 percent, compared with 47 percent for Latin America.

In a rational economic world, these two data seem to contradict. An employer would be foolish to hire a man if an equally qualified woman could be found to do the same job cheaper. Machismo alone (even the mythical Chilean type) isn’t powerful enough to sacrifice productivity and profits in the highly-competitive world of Chilean business. If women were indeed cheaper to hire than men, then men would be discriminated against, not women.

So something else is going on, but the reporter apparently wasn’t curious enough to find out.

As I said, presumably the “administration officials” were comparing like professions, and not housemaids and nannies to construction workers and cab drivers. After all, Chiilean universities are graduating roughly the same number of women as men in many professions, so let’s assume that women engineers or schooteachers earn less than men at the same position and experience. Why?

One possible reason may be Chile’s liberal maternity leave law, which guarantees 100% of wages for up to 18 weeks absence. This is the most liberal in the Americas, and the same as Cuba and Venezuela (in the U.S, it’s 12 weeks and 0%). This law imposes a labor cost on the employer while providing a benefit to the employee (a portion is paid by the taxpayer). Is this benefit figured into the woman employee’s compensation?

My guess is no, and that’s because the article also mentions that some employers have been reported demanding pregnancy tests for female job applicants, in violation of the law. (It’s also against the law in Chile to dismiss employees who become pregnant.) These unscrupulous employers are obviously looking for ways to avoid the significant extra cost of hiring a woman in her fertile years.

Perversely, Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, legal terms for hampering the pursuit of the facts, when what he did was to help to expose the facts of the case which political enemies wanted to conceal: that the VP did not send Wilson to Niger as alleged by Wilson in his largely fictional column (as discredited by the 9/11 commission), but still cited by many as exposure of administration attempts to manipulate intelligence. 

It was Wilson who lied and Libby who (among others) wanted to expose the lie. But the liar walks (in celebrity status) and the truth-tellers are pursued by powerful government prosecuters.

Orwellian, isn’t it? 

As we now know, the principals in this case were Armitage and Tenant, with supporting performances by Wilson, Miller, Woodward, Fleischer, and Novak. But whom did Fitzgerald pursue? Cheney, Rove, and Libby.

Fitz should have been canned as soon as he set off after these wild geese. But then we would have the press treat it as a repeat of the Saturday Night Massacre.

You can’t win.